


Putting Out Fire

by Nokomis



Category: Bandom, Mindless Self Indulgence
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:18:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyn-Z gets bit by a werewolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Putting Out Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to lielabell for the beta! Set in some nebulous pre-Projekt Rev point in MSI's history.

It wasn’t until after the show when Lyn-Z walked into the dressing room that she even noticed the blood. She was sweaty and tired and filled with leftover adrenaline, but even through that she didn’t register any pain in her leg.

“What the fuck did you do to yourself now?” Steve asked, pushing his bandanna up so he could stare at her leg with both eyes. “Not it on taking you to the hospital.”

“Not it!” Jimmy and Kitty both chorused in response, fingers on noses, followed by a quick round of roshambo to determine that Jimmy was the one that would have to take her to the hospital, if need be.

“Thanks, guys,” Lyn-Z said dryly. “I feel like I’m drowning in concern.”

Her leg wasn’t hurting, but when she propped her foot on the edge of the table and peered closer, it looked like a fucking _bite_ had been taken out of her thigh. Kitty offered her a damp towel, which Lyn-Z used to wipe up the worst of the blood – really, she hadn’t even noticed it, it hadn’t felt any different from the sweat that always covered her—and mourned the fact that her favorite kneesocks were well and truly fucked.

“I see London, I see France,” Jimmy started to sing-song, but Kitty punched him in the arm.

“She’s actually hurt,” Kitty hissed, “and that song got old like four years ago. We are all well-acquainted with Lyn-Z’s underpants.”

“My favorites are the pink flowery ones you refuse to wear on stage,” Steve piped in.

“I have to wait for you to return them,” Lyn-Z replied. There was no use pointing out that her stage undies were basically shorts and thus totally acceptable to be seen, because she knew from experience that just prompted her lovely, lovely band to gift her with granny panties. “And this doesn’t hurt at all, what the hell.”

She leaned in for a closer look. It definitely looked like a circle of teeth marks, though it didn’t appear to still be bleeding, despite how deep the cuts were.

Steve moved in for a closer look too, their heads almost touching as they stared at the wound.

“Not that I want you to be horribly injured,” Steve began, “but shouldn’t this still be bleeding? It’s fresh.”

“And deep,” Lyn-Z agreed. She scrunched up her nose. “I’m trying to figure out what happened.”

“Well,” Jimmy said, “it appears that someone mistook your leg for a nice evening snackeroo.”

“Brilliant deduction,” Steve said. He reached out and prodded at her leg. “It seriously doesn’t even sting? No achey-wakeys?”

“Not at all,” Lyn-Z said, straightening up and holding the towel to the wound. Looking at it was too disconcerting; the lack of pain made it seem like she was looking at someone else’s leg, not her own. “I think it’s getting better.”

“Want to get it checked out?” Kitty asked, staring at the pink-streaked towel. “If someone bit you, you might get some weird disease.”

“More likely she _gave_ someone a weird disease,” Steve said.

Lyn-Z laughed and lifted the towel. There was no fresh blood, only the leftover streaks she hadn’t cleaned off. “I think I’m fine. If it looks bad in the morning, I’ll get it checked out,” she promised after seeing Kitty’s look of concern.

“Pinky-swear,” Jimmy said suddenly. Lyn-Z saw how troubled he looked and obediently stuck out her pinky.

After linking pinkies with everyone, Lyn-Z went to scrub and bandage her leg and change into clothes that weren’t plastered to her back with sweat. 

*

Seeing fans was one of her favorite parts of being in the band, but by the time she got out to them she was exhausted. Her limbs felt heavy and tired, and there was a slow, throbbing ache in her thigh now, apparently making up for the absence of pain earlier.

She tried to ignore it as she signed and posed for pictures and got to put voices and personalities to faces she’d seen in the audience, but she soon realized that her limbs felt _leaden_ , not just heavy. She was way more exhausted than normal, like all her energy had somehow leaked out.

She smiled and apologized to the remaining fans, turning to go to the bus and just curl up in her bunk and _sleep_ , when out of the corner of her eye she spotted someone just standing, leaning against the wall and watching her intently.

He smiled at her—no, not smiled. He _bared his teeth_ at her.

Lyn-Z blinked at him, but her vision was starting to blur, so instead of approaching him, she just made her way to the bus and crawled into her bunk.

She didn’t even take off her boots before passing out.

*

Lyn-Z woke up slowly. Sounds filtered in to her as if through a haze, and she tried to muffle out the sound of Steve and Jimmy bickering over toe jam by shoving her head under her pillow.

All this accomplished was that the air she was breathing went hot and stale almost immediately, and she could still fucking hear Jimmy and Steve bickering in the kitchenette, seriously, were they _yelling_ about toe jam?

“Stop yelling!” she shouted, undoubtedly futilely.

A minute later she felt someone poke her in the side. “We weren’t.”

Steve’s voice practically echoed through her bunk, it was so loud. 

“You still are,” she groaned.

“Are you okay?” his voice _boomed_. She smashed the pillow closer around her ears. It was like being hungover, only she hadn’t drunk anything the night before.

“Go away,” she managed to mumble. She was so sore all over; what the hell had she _done_ last night?

Steve started poking her, and she tried to escape, but he was relentless and knew all her ticklish spots.   
She ended up curling away from him and kicking futilely, but Steve was on a get-Lyn-Z’s-lazy-ass-out-of-  
bed mission. She really had no choice but to give in.

She blinked rapidly as she rolled out of her bunk. The bus seemed unusually bright and smelled   
even worse than usual. Steve watched her, hands on his hips, looking oddly like her mother. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” she protested. The words rang loudly in her own ears.

Kitty poked her head through the sliding door that lead to the back room. “What’s going on?”

“Lyn-Z had crazyflakes for breakfast,” Steve replied.

Lyn-Z could hear every scraping, creaking noise the door made as Kitty pushed it open. It reminded her uncomfortably of the scene in Evil Dead 2 where Ash went a little nuts, and she tried to ignore the way that every sound was too loud and too crisp and just too _much_.

She covered her ears with her hands before she realized she’d even moved, and Steve’s grin faded into a look of pure concern. “What’s wrong, Zoid?”

Kitty pressed the back of her hand to Lyn-Z’s forehead. “She’s burning up!”

“Everything’s so loud,” Lyn-Z mumbled. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it would somehow make the noise abate. It didn’t.

“You need to see a doctor,” Kitty said.

Lyn-Z shook her head. There was something wrong, but she knew in her gut somehow that it wasn’t anything a doctor could cure. She briefly remembered the guy from the night before baring his teeth at her, and felt a tug within herself that she felt she had to obey.

“I need to go,” she said.

“I’ll grab my jacket,” Kitty said.

Lyn-Z didn’t argue. She just peeked out one of the windows to see where they were. “Wait, we were here last night.”

“The interstate got shut down. Some sort of tanker spill,” Steve said. “Apparently if they let anyone drive past they’d turn into irradiated mutants or something. So we’re not officially hitting the road for another hour.”

That would be pushing it to get a soundcheck at the next venue, but Lyn-Z felt a twinge of gratitude. They were in the same city. She had a chance at seeing the guy again.

She hurried off the bus, ignoring Kitty calling after her to wait up.

*

There was a coffee shop on the corner.

She’d never been there before, but she somehow _knew_ that she needed to go inside. There was a strange sense of warmth about the shop, run-down as it was, and as soon as she stepped inside the noise from the street – which had given her a pounding headache halfway through her walk, though gratefully it had drowned out Kitty, who hadn’t given up on following her – faded to a quiet buzz.

She looked around. No one was paying any attention to her. The few scattered patrons were intent on their own conversations or, if they were alone, their coffee, and the waitress was busy refilling ketchup bottles.

She hovered near the door until she glanced at the back corner booth.

The guy from the night before was there. He finger-waved at her.

Lyn-Z took a deep breath and strode over to him She slid in the booth and hissed, “What the fuck did you do to me?”

He shrugged and said calmly, “Coffee? You look like you could use some.”

“Last night,” Lyn-Z said. “You bared your teeth at me.” Realization swept over her. “And you bit me too, didn’t you?”

The dude raised an eyebrow. “What are you getting at?”

It wasn’t a denial. Lyn-Z slammed her fist down on the table. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You’ll figure it out,” he said. There was something maddening about his _scent_ , she realized. He was up and halfway out of the diner before the word popped into her mind.

Werewolf.

*

“So this is ridiculous,” Lyn-Z began when she got back to the bus.

“As ridiculous as ditching me to go gallivanting about to shithole diners?” Kitty interrupted.

“More,” Lyn-Z said. “I think I’m a werewolf.”

There was a pause as Jimmy, Steve and Kitty exchanged looks. 

“Go on,” Jimmy said, tapping a finger against his chin.

“It’s just, that weird dude bit me, then I followed his _scent_ halfway across town… it’s either vampire, werewolf or zombie, and I didn’t die, so that rules out everything but werewolf.”

“She makes a valid point,” Steve said to Jimmy and Kitty. 

“Except for how werewolves don’t exist,” Lyn-Z said, because they looked _serious_.

Kitty waved her hand dismissively. “You say that after all the shit we’ve seen. Amazing.”

“I think we’ve pretty much established that the world works on a ‘don’t dream it, be it’ philosophy,” Jimmy agreed. “Why should supernatural creepy crawlies be any different?”

“I’m not a creepy crawlie,” Lyn-Z protested.

“You totally are,” Steve said. “You _sniffed a dude out_. A dude who isn’t even on tour. That’s creepy _and_ crawlie.”

“Fuck you all,” Lyn-Z said, but she felt better than she had all day. “What if I turn into a hideous beast and never turn back?”

“Crap, we’ll have to find another fire-breathing bassist,” Jimmy said.

“Unless you can play as a hideous beast,” Steve said. “Do you think you’ll have thumbs? Like is this gonna be Wolf Man shit?”

“How the fuck would I know?” Lyn-Z asked. “I’ve never done this before.”

Jimmy seemed to light up. “Then I guess we need to prepare ourselves for every contingency.”

“Oh great,” Steve sighed. “Look at what you started, Lyn-Z. Now Jimmy’s going to hatch plans.”

“Let’s get dangerous,” Jimmy announced. He did the appropriate pose.

“Let’s not,” Lyn-Z suggested, but she was pretty sure no one would listen to her. This already had the feel of a situation that had spun wildly out of control. Kind of the same feeling she had after her audition for the band.

She took a deep breath, trying to ignore how strange the world seemed to her now. 

*

“The full moon is on our off night,” Kitty said triumphantly.

Lyn-Z looked up from her laptop. She’d been googling werewolf myths pretty much constantly for the past two days, but she hadn’t found anything that felt concrete to her, even with the disturbing number of her symptoms that appeared. 

Although the symptoms themselves hadn’t lessened, somehow they had become almost normal to her. Sort of like she were getting used to it all. Like night vision, she figured. You had to adjust or you’d be helpless. “What are we going to do?”

“What are _you_ going to do is the better question,” Kitty said. “You’re kind of worrying me, babe. You’ve been a little off these past few days.”

“Of course I have,” Lyn-Z said. She scrolled past another Teen Wolf fansite. “I’m turning into a werewolf.”

“But you haven’t really…” Kitty floundered for words. “You haven’t acted like that bothers you.”

Lyn-Z was at a loss as to what to say. “It bothers me.”

Kitty didn’t look convinced.

Lyn-Z didn’t really want to get into this, but it was _Kitty_ and she had to reassure her. “I know that I’m different now. I don’t know what the full moon is going to bring, but the damage’s already been done. I can barely remember what if felt like to be just…” she cut off abruptly, before she could say ‘human.’

“But you haven’t…” Kitty began, and Lyn-Z realized that maybe her band wasn’t as one hundred percent convinced of her metamorphosis as they acted like.

“And I don’t know what that’s going to be like,” Lyn-Z agreed. “But everything else is already different. How I hear, how I see… even how things _taste_ is different. I’m just trying to get used to it, since I don’t think it’s ever going to change.”

“If it makes you feel better,” Kitty offered, “you still smell the same.” 

Lyn-Z slugged her in the arm, then pulled her in tight for a hug. “So are we going to buy me a leash or a cage?”

“I was thinking a shitty motel room,” Kitty said. “No one will bat an eye, no matter what you do to it.”

“And that’s why you’re the brains of this operation,” Lyn-Z said.

*

“Okay,” Steve said, looking around the motel room that they’d secured for the night. “There are no fire exits and I’m pretty sure the windows are bulletproof glass, so I think it should work.”

“Just don’t claw through the walls,” Jimmy said. “I think you might catch hepatitis from them.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw a guy get shanked in the breezeway,” Kitty said, peering out the blinds, “and no cops yet. So I think you can howl your guts out and people will just think you’re a furry.”

Jimmy’s eyes lit up. “Do you think—“

“No,” Lyn-Z interrupted before he could scar her for life with whatever horrifying thought he wanted to share. “Whatever you’re thinking, just no.”

The room was basically every single sleazy motel room merged into one. Lyn-Z set her bag down on the bed warily. “I’ll hook the chain lock when you go. It’ll hopefully be enough.” 

She didn’t know what was going to happen, and now that she was actually here, it was sinking in that she might actually turn into something tonight.

It was terrifying. 

Steve plopped down on the bed. “Do you get porn in here?”

Kitty sighed and sat down at the table in the corner, rustling through a pile of fliers. “Really, Steve? You want to find cheap hotel porn _now_?”

“It’s not even late enough for the juicy stuff to be on,” Jimmy said, pushing Steve’s legs aside so he could sprawl on the bed, too. 

“I’m not much in a porn mood,” Lyn-Z said. 

“Please, you’re practically vibrating off the walls with nervous energy,” Steve said. “Porn’ll fix you.”

Lyn-Z exchanged a look with Kitty. “Yeah, no.”

“Buzzkill,” Jimmy teased.

Lyn-Z joined them on the bed, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve and propping her feet on Jimmy’s belly. “I don’t have any animalistic urges to fight off right now, thanks.”

“Just wait,” Jimmy said. “You might go into _heat_.”

Steve looked horrified. “Dude. Do we need to spay you?”

“Fuck you all,” Lyn-Z said.

“Seriously,” Kitty added. “We’d only need to spay her if one of you two was a werewolf, too. Don’t bite them, Linds.”

“Noted,” Lyn-Z agreed.

“Do you feel any different?” Steve asked. He leaned his head on her shoulder. From how quiet the room had gotten, Lyn-Z knew how nervous they were for her.

She shook her head, even though that wasn’t quite true. Her bones ached, but it was easy enough to ignore. 

Her band loitered making small talk about video games and cell phone bills until Lyn-Z finally had to kick them out.

They were reluctant to leave, and Lyn-Z didn’t look forward to where her thoughts were going to go once she didn’t have the distraction of her best friends, but she just couldn’t let them linger anymore. The aching was getting more noticeable, and she knew that _it_ was going to happen soon, whatever _it_ was.

She promised them she was fine and pushed them out the door.

“We’ll be back at dawn,” Kitty promised.

The door shutting behind them sounded strangely final.

*

For a while Lyn-Z settled in on the bed and watched TV, flipping aimlessly through the channels. She kicked off her boots, and kept checking on her phone, giving Steve updates on how uneventful her evening was.

She peered out the window a few times, looking for the moon, but the angle was wrong. 

After a while she started pacing, feeling like she’d chosen a cage after all, when an intense cramp shot through her body. She doubled over, and when it passed she took several deep breaths. 

Lyn-Z carefully removed her boots and socks, then glanced at her outfit and said quietly, “What the hell,” and stripped out if it too. She looked at her clothes lying in a heap on the floor, and then carefully put them inside a dresser drawer, shutting it all the way. No sense leaving the clothes to chance.

The cramps returned quickly, and Lyn-Z locked herself into the bathroom.

Then there was pain and she lost herself for a while, followed by strange flashes – sniffing the strange new smells, breaking down the bathroom door, pawing at the mattress, pressing her paws against the window as she howled at the moon. Everywhere there were _scents_ that she wanted to chase and identify and figure out.

It was like she was brand new, and the world was filled with so much she had to discover. The colors were strange and muted and _off_ , but the scents and feel and even the taste of things were so vibrant that she wondered how she’d ever managed to live in the world before this.

Walking on four paws felt just as natural as two feet.

When someone walked by the window she snapped at the glass and tried to tell them, “This is me. This is mine,” but words sounded just like snarls.

She woke up the next morning curled up naked in a pile of shredded mattress. She _hurt_ from head to toe, like she’d just played two shows in a row and had bad stagediving experiences both times, and there were already mottled bruises all over her body.

There were gouges in the door. There was no denying it; the claw marks were clearly defined. She’d really _turned_.

“Fuck.”

*

“This is going to be a bitch to work tour schedules around,” Kitty said with a sigh. “I’m not going to be the one to tell the manager about this new eccentricity.”

“It’s totally the punk rock thing to do,” Steve said. “Well, really more of a goth-diva thing to do, but we’ll just incorporate that into our aesthetic. Who’s up for black lipstick?”

“We are totally not famous enough for that to work,” Lyn-Z pointed out. She was a werewolf. She had turned into a _wolf_.

“Blasphemy,” Jimmy said. “If Bruce Wayne can make the whole Batman thing work, we can work around the lunar calendar.”

Lyn-Z decided not to point out the fact that Jimmy’s role model was fictional. “It’s just the moon,” she agreed. 

“So what did you look like?” Steve asked.

Lyn-Z stared at him. “I absolutely checked myself out in the mirror mid-supernatural transformation.”

“We’ll rig up a camera next time,” Kitty said. She had an excited gleam in her eyes, like she always did when presented with a technological challenge.

“We could sell tickets,” Jimmy said.

They had all looked around the motel room with varying degrees of shock, but none of them had doubted her. Lyn-Z felt a strange sense of relief that was completely at odds with her new knowledge about how she was going to spend her full moons for the rest of her life. “Not on your life, buddy,” she told Jimmy. “I’m not your bitch.”

“Weeeell,” Jimmy said, and Lyn-Z punched him in the arm.

Steve pulled her into a quick bro-hug, and then pushed her away, laughing. “You smell like wet dog.”

“You’ve already overplayed the dog jokes,” Lyn-Z said. She paused. “Also, I put that motel room on your card.”

She fled to her bunk before he realized what that meant. She had a new crackle of energy in her body that she hadn’t had before, and she found she didn’t really mind the hypersensitivity she’d developed.

Maybe being a werewolf wouldn’t be all that bad.


End file.
